Marcus Evans provides a better ROI than other industry events

“We gain at least one new client per Marcus Evans Summit, with an average contract value of USD 2.5 million. That is a better return on investment than what we get from other industry events” said Marcelo Rouco, Chief Executive Officer, Ecosave Holdings Inc., a sponsor company at the Marcus Evans CFO Summit in Australia, and the Long-Term Care & Senior Living CXO Summit and the Healthcare CFO, Financial Strategy & Revenue Cycle Summit in North America.

What business opportunities have the Marcus Evans Summits brought your way?

A number of prospects we first met at a Summit ended up turning into clients, in both Australia and the US. They were all multi-million dollar opportunities. The Summits are worth our investment, even if we get one client per event, as our average contract is worth USD 2.5 million.

Did you know those organisations? Could you have ended up working with them anyway?

No, I do not think so. Most of them were from outside the region we target. In the US, we primarily work in the New York City down to Washington D.C. corridor, and all the clients we gained came from outside of that area. There is not even one client that we got from Marcus Evans that we could have found on our own.

In your industry, how difficult is it to arrange a one-to-one meeting with a decision-maker?

We need to be in front of the C-suite, and it is always a challenge to access decision-makers in medium-large organisations. The great thing about Marcus Evans is that we meet at least 10-15 C-suite prospects at every Summit. That would normally take a salesperson four to five months of effort to be able to sit in front of that many CEOs.

When we cold call a new organisation, we usually manage to get in front of a third of the people we call. I do not know if these specific organisations would have agreed to meet us, but we would not have called them in the first place as they are not in the geographic areas we usually focus on.

How would you compare Marcus Evans Summits to other industry events?

The Summits are more effective at getting new business. I would rather do a Marcus Evans Summit than any other event. The key feature we like is the chance to sit with potential clients for 30-minute face-to-face meetings. That is the most valuable part of the event for us. We can explain what we do and discuss the potential of working together.

At events run by associations or other groups, we might have a booth, where 90 percent of the people who walk by are not individuals we want to talk with. That is just a waste of our time. The one-to-one meetings are what make the Summit a much better event for us. Having people manning our booth ends up costing a lot more, taking more resources than a Marcus Evans Summit where we can have one person to take multiple meetings with decision-makers.